Questions tagged [taxonomy]
Questions on the classification of biological organisms, and the methods used for classifying them.
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What are the differences between insects and spiders?
I have always been told that a spider is not an insect, since the former has 8 legs and the latter 6 legs.
Is it just a matter of definition and spiders could have been defined as "8-legged insects"? ...
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How to define ammonites?
I miss the definition of ammonite. In my opinion, many authors confuse the term "Ammonite" and "Ammonoid". Ammonoids (Ammonoidea) are large group of cephalopods including for example goniatites (...
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How are asexual species classified?
Are there multiple distinct genetic lineages of asexual species that are closely enough related to not be considered distinct or does any genetic change result in a new species?
I would assume there'...
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Why is Cannabis Sativa considered a distinct form of Cannabis?
My understanding is that the word Sativa is Latin and means "cultivated." See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sativum
Since all cannabis consumed by people is cultivated and grown from seed, ...
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Did Plant Cells Evolve from Animal, Protist, or Fungal Cells?
I know protists and animals preceded plants but I am unaware of when fungi arose in relation to plants. At the moment, I cannot find a resource stating how plants evolved from existing kingdoms, or ...
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What sauropod genera had a double row of chevron bones in the tail?
I know that Diplodocus is marked by the feature of having a double row of or "double-beamed" chevron bones in the tail, but how diagnostic is this feature if several other sauropods have it? I mean, ...
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What is (probably) the closest living relative of the trilobite?
The trilobites vanished from the fossil record many millions of years ago, but they were obviously arthropods of some sort. Do we know which animals are their closest living relatives? I've heard both ...
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Is there a way tell apart dinosaurs from similar extinct reptiles?
When I was a child, I thought I knew what a dinosaur was. But, as I grew older, I was told that many of the extinct species that I thought were dinosaurs (dimetrodons, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, etc.) ...
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Is Wikipedia a good source of taxonomy? [duplicate]
I have been quite interested in biology lately,and I would like to know whether it is a good choice to look up taxonomic information there.
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Why aren't mammals and reptiles considered amphibians?
We've all heard it: birds descend from dinosaurs, so they're dinosaurs too. But this got me thinking: doesn't this mean that, for instance, all terrestrial vertebrates – including humans – are ...
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Using spp. for taxa other than Genus
Can spp. be used for taxa other than genus ? For example Noctuidae spp. meaning certain genera in the Noctuidae family.
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How many proteins are common to all species? [duplicate]
Are there any proteins that are common to every Species in Earth's biosphere? If so, how many?
If not, are there any proteins common to every species of an entire Kingdom? If so, how many?
If not, ...
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Pre-linnaean names, where can I ask about current IDs?
I run a large website with lots of historical herb books. For the older ones, finding out current botanical names is very difficult.
Can I ask here? If not, does anybody know where I could ask what ...
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Are All Taxonomic Groups Uniquely Named?
The Linnaean classification system classifies and groups organisms into taxonomic groups: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc. Obviously, a clade at any taxonomic level is uniquely determined by its ...
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How related do life forms need to be to produce hybrids?
Specifically, I'm asking about infertile hybrids like ligers, mules, camas, etc. How closely related do animals need to be?
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Why is “VOLVOX” not considered to be in PROTOZA?
Volovox is an Algae, but it moves with the help of Flagella. Protozoa has members that move by Flagella. Why is Volovox taxonomically in the Algae instead of Protozoa?
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Are bears related to dogs in a similar way to how cats are related to 'panthers'?
I've tried searching on Wikipedia but I couldn't find what family dogs belonged to. Ursidae is 'bears' and Canis is 'dogs' ; Panthera is big cats like:- tigers and jaguars is what I know.
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Can two different species in the same genus generally succeed in the same habitat?
This plant-care website writes
In the context of plant care, usually most plants within the same genus need the same environmental conditions suitable for plant growth. If the genus of a plant is ...
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1answer
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Why is the spirit bear/Kermode bear a subspecies of the American black bear Ursus americanus?
The Kermode bear Ursus americanus kermodei is only found in British Columbia,Canada. The Kermode bear has single nucleotide polymorphism at the melanocortin 1 receptor gene (mc1r) locus which cause ...
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Why do both the mango and the bee have “Indica” in their binomial name?
In my textbook, it is written that the binomial name of mango is Mangifera indica and the binomial name of a bee is Apis indica. Now in the name the second part is the name of species. But mango and ...
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1answer
44 views
Hominidae is to hominid as Poaceae is to what?
I considered asking this on English.SE, but decided against it, since it strictly applies to biological nomenclature, which not many of them will know about - particularly that of plants.
So, in ...
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Have traditional categories such as phylum, class, genus, been dispensed with in modern taxonomy?
Looking through the one zoom and EOL projects I see no reference to such categories.
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Should the infraspecific epithet agree in gender with the genus name?
Let's take the following plant name
Gymnocalycium mihanovichii
So we were to designate the yellow form of the plant, would it be
Gymnocalycium mihanovichii f. aurea
because forma is ...
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Rank-specific rules for taxonomic classification
There appears to be a very specific (although not universally agreed) list of characteristics that describe what a "species" is--and the list applies to ALL species. Are there similar generic rules ...
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Confused about plant phyla
My kids and I are doing a fun project collecting pictures of life in parks and national parks around us. We are trying to classify what we find down to genus and species.
However, I'm confused about ...
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Identification of Jumping Spider Species
I found this jumping spider (Salticidae family) in Pune/India. Most common species of jumpers in my region is heavy-bodied jumper (Hyllus semicupreus), but this is different species by observing body ...
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1answer
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Who are Ursprungliche Eukaryoten?
The school textbook of my daughter (the textbook is written in German) describes the five kingdoms of life: prokaryota, plants, fungi, animals and "Ursprungliche Eukaryoten". These are defined as "...
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The parts of the phylogenetic nomenclature that need to be “unique”
I am not quite sure I have sorted through the diversity of approaches to nomenclature, but I had a specific question to help clarify what is going on. Basically I am just wondering what needs to be ...
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Example Clade Names in PhyloCode
After looking through the PhyloCode, the only thing I found that looked like an example was in Article 9, Chapter 4:
A node-based definition may be abbreviated "<A&B" or "<A&B&C&...
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1answer
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Help me identify this Beetle sp?
I observed many beetles like this in Pune/India in the beginning of rainy season. It was dark green in color with white spots and not too much shiny like many other beetles. Size is about 2cm to 3cm.
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Is there a family equivalent to “congener”?
Is there an equivalent word to "congener" but for species in the same family (family in the sense of the taxonomic rank)?
"confamer"? "confamiler"???
I know I can just say "species X and other taxa ...
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1answer
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Why swordfish aren't put in the same family as Marlins?
Why Swordfish (Xiphias gladius), which are very similar to Marlins, do not belong to the same family as Marlin - Istiophoridae?
Both has long bill or a sword in the upper jaw, both has (at least in ...
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Taxonomy problems on algae: Is Cryptophyta a Phylum or a Class rank?
I am currently interested in algae taxonomy (I am not an expert in the field).
I retrieved the taxonomy of my sequences with their NCBI access number via the taxonkit software (https://bioinf....
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is there an easy way to remember taxonomy? [closed]
So I have trouble remembering the order of taxonomy for classification.
i.e domain>kingdom>phylum>class>order>family>genus>species
I can never remember it, is there an good mnemonic to remember them? ...
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Help me identifiy this moth?
I found this moth in Bengaluru/India. Its body length was nearly 2cm. Brown colored with three yellow rings.
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Help me identify this fly species?
I found this fly in Bengaluru/India. It was larger than usual flies. It was more than 1cm in size, with black color which has blue shades in it. I managed to take just this one pic, then it flew away.
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Appropriateness of PCA to visualize clusters in genetic data
In many genetic studies, PCA is often utilized to examine genetic cluster in human populations. Rarely is the % variance reported for the components. With human data it's been my experience that the ...
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Are Triceratops and Eotriceratops similar enough to be considered as the same genus?
Everybody knows Triceratops, the horned dinosaur from Late Cretaceous North America, who lived 68-66 MYA.
In 2007, Eotriceratops xerinsularis was named and described (Wikipedia). It lived in (what is ...
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How would I represent this on a cladogram?
So, right now I am making a cladogram (More of a dendrogram) for a kingdom of fictional species, and I'm not exactly sure how to represent a certain relationship.
Let's say that the oldest class in ...
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1answer
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Identifying flying insect from southern Poland / Upper Silesia area
Yesterday evening, I spotted this quite huge insect at my home in southern Poland (the exact location of the place). Unfortunately, I have only a very low quality pictures available at the moment:
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Difference between Genus, Genus sp. and Genus spp
What is the difference between the three following sentences?
There is significant increase in Bifidobacterium
There is significant increase in Bifidobacterium sp.
There is significant increase in ...
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How can a two genera share a latin name?
Recently, someone asked if species could share a latin name. In his answer, Remi.b said the latin name is unique to the species, and I think he is right.
However, this made me remember that I once ...
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Looking for the closest example of life forms similar to some mathematical patterns
Caveat: this is my first question here, it is quite interdisciplinary, but I hope to be in the correct place to ask. I am a user of Mathematics Stack Exchange since some years ago, and this question ...
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Are there comprehensive species descriptions on most species?
I was having a browse through Wikipedia and noticed how even the rarest, hardest to find species of bird have comprehensive articles and comprehensive descriptions, but other species like the 1400 ...
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Why was Achromobacter xerosis removed from the NCBI taxonomy?
The Global Catalogue of Microorganisms lists a bacterium called Achromobacter xerosis which is mentioned in several papers and patents. It once existed in the NCBI taxonomy database, with ID 216898. ...
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Help me identify species of fruit fly?
I found this fruit fly in Pune/India. It was about 1 cm in size. I explored info on several species in same region, but they were different in appearance, especially that black spot in middle of body.
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What do the qualifiers used in botanical species names mean?
These are all the qualifiers I've come across so far. The first 3 were quite easy to google, but the other 4 have me stumped.
I also can't say I'm completely clear on the nuances of ...
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what is the classification of this stream insect?
This insect I found from Southers region of Bangladesh. Its limbs are larger than its body.and the picture shows its dorsal part.
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need to identify species of this Leaf-footed bug?
I found this bug in Pune/India. I checked many species of leaf-footed bugs, but none of them is matching this one. It was about 3cm long. It was not showing any movement.
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The 4-chambered heart
Birds and humans have a four chambered heart. All animals having 4-chambered hearts are warm-blooded.
Why are crocodiles an exception? Why are they cold-blooded even though they have a 4-chambered ...
